Precancerous esophageal epithelia are associated with significantly increased scattering coefficients

Jing-Wei Su; Yang-Hsien Lin; Chun-Ping Chiang; Jang-Ming Lee; Chao-Mao Hsieh; Min-Shu Hsieh; Pei-Wen Yang; Chen-Ping Wang; Ping-Huei Tseng; Yi-Chia Lee; Kung-Bin Sung

doi:10.1364/BOE.6.003795

Precancerous esophageal epithelia are associated with significantly increased scattering coefficients

Biomed Opt Express. 2015 Sep 3;6(10):3795-805. doi: 10.1364/BOE.6.003795. eCollection 2015 Oct 1.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Biomedical Electronics and Bioinformatics, National Taiwan University, Taiwan.
² Department of Dentistry, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taiwan ; National Taiwan University College of Medicine, Taiwan.
³ Department of Surgery, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taiwan ; National Taiwan University College of Medicine, Taiwan.
⁴ Department of Pathology, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taiwan ; National Taiwan University College of Medicine, Taiwan.
⁵ Department of Otolaryngology, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taiwan ; National Taiwan University College of Medicine, Taiwan.
⁶ Department of Internal Medicine, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taiwan ; National Taiwan University College of Medicine, Taiwan.
⁷ Institute of Biomedical Electronics and Bioinformatics, National Taiwan University, Taiwan ; Department of Electrical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taiwan ; Molecular Imaging Center, National Taiwan University, Taiwan.

Abstract

The progression of epithelial precancers into cancer is accompanied by changes of tissue and cellular structures in the epithelium. Correlations between the structural changes and scattering coefficients of esophageal epithelia were investigated using quantitative phase images and the scattering-phase theorem. An ex vivo study of 14 patients demonstrated that the average scattering coefficient of precancerous epithelia was 37.8% higher than that of normal epithelia from the same patient. The scattering coefficients were highly correlated with morphological features including the cell density and the nuclear-to-cytoplasmic ratio. A high interpatient variability in scattering coefficients was observed and suggests identifying precancerous lesions based on the relative change in scattering coefficients.

Keywords: (170.0180) Microscopy; (170.4580) Optical diagnostics for medicine; (170.6935) Tissue characterization; (290.7050) Turbid media.